Sublime

The latest example: Outdoor Voices founder Tyler Haney, who launched the athleisure brand in 2014, is stepping down from her role as CEO; the company has reportedly raised a “down round” of funding from its existing investors at a lower valuation, and was said to be losing money on around $40 million of sales last year.

It seems investors are now returning to the fundamentals, where organic growth is valued over paid user acquisition and profitable customer acquisition is a focus versus the land-grab approach.

But with a free tier to push the business, perhaps too many users were free and not enough were in the paying category. It seems that the writing might have been on the wall last June when the company announced it was laying off 14% of its workforce.